Acrylics and inks on cardboard.
From Extreme Dinosaurs! (the
book)
This painting was originally intended for the cover of Extreme
Dinosaurs! (Byron Preiss Publications).
It includes a new restoration of
Chirostenotes based on Mike Triebold's new, gigantic specimen. Chirostenotes was
a caenagnathid relative of oviraptor that surprises for its enormous size (5
meters long! The biggest oviraptorosaur found until now). It had a very high
crest and completely toothless beak. The long clawed fingered hands folded like
wings, pivoted sideways by the semilunate carpal in the wrist.
Initially I
restored it with a shortish tail that finished with a fan of feathers like
Caudipteryx.
Far-fetched? If Caudipteryx is now almost unanimously considered
an oviraptorosaur and the recently described oviraptorosaur Nomingia had also a
short tail with a pygostyle, it does make sense that feather ornamentation ran
in the family. Just as you can see in the rest of the Oviraptor pictures in this
website! Were the whole oviraptor family flightless dinosaurs?The animals
accompanying Chirostenotes are the famous flying dromaeosaur from Madagascar:
Rahonavis ostromi and in the background, another of Triebold's discoveries:
Initially described as Pachycephalosaurus this wonderful ornithopod most
probably was a full-sized Stygimoloch, the long-spiked pachycephalosaur
(popularly known as head-butting dinosaurs).
